The clothing industry is no longer simply about fabrics, cut and design, and simple tailoring will soon no longer be enough to satisfy consumers. One of the most popular and fastest growing fields in the world today is the integration of technology with various items of clothing. Arizona State University started it all in 2004, with their Scentsory Chameleon Bodysuit, which incorporated electronics and fluidics into textiles to create a “wellness costume”. In layman’s terms, clothing that detects and protects wearers from pathogens.

The project, led by Frederic Zenhausern, director of the Applied NanoBioscience Centre at ASU, produced two types of wellness costume: one is for personal health, while the other is a camouflage military outfit. The military suit is able to detect bacteria, analyse it for characteristics to determine what type of pathogen it is (small pox, anthrax) and then destroy it. It will also be able to monitor vital signs and energy levels and transmit that information to military medics.

The personal health suit was developed in conjunction with Galina Mihaleva, a costume designer in ASU’s dance department, and Jenny Tillotson, a London based “scentsory designer”. The prototype demonstrated the range of applications that a personal health suit could deliver, such as a fragrance in response to a particular physical distress signal. It could also deliver specific dugs (insulin) or insect repellent in response to bodily cues.

Since then, various other institutes and researchers have made enormous strides in the burgeoning field. Kevlar, for instance, has been given germ-fighting properties in addition to its current safety applications. Yuyu Sun and Jie Luo, from the University of South Dakota, have developed a method to coat Kevlar with acyclic N-Halamine, which protects it again E. coli, Staphylococcus, Candida tropicalis and Bacillus subtilis (mimics anthrax). The coating, which is PMAA-based, not only contains antibacterial properties, but antifungal, antiviral and antispore functions as well.

But that’s not all. Last year, a student from Cornell University designed clothing that prevents colds and flu, and never needs washing. Textronics, in Delaware, has designed a sports bra that monitors heart rate.

Bras are big news in the technology/clothing industry, as a team from the University of Bolton, England, led by Professor Elias Siores have developed a bra that can detect breast cancer before it fully develops and spreads. In addition, the bra monitors the effectiveness of treatment that the wearer is receiving.

Shirley Coyle, an engineer from the National Centre for Sensor Research at Dublin City University, and who is also involved in the European Commission’s Biotex programme, says that our clothes serve as an interface between our bodies and environment, and can therefore play a pivotal role in our health.

Part of the Biotext programme, which focuses on the development of biochemical sensing techniques and integrating them with textiles, is the development of clothing that will monitor sweat in terms of acidity, salinity and perspiration rate. It is hoped that we will soon be able to buy clothes that have built-in cooling systems, deodorisers, moisturisers and vitamins.

Developers, however, are careful to add that as beneficial as these items of clothing are, they are not meant to replace existing diagnostic methods. They merely serve to provide much needed information to aid doctors in getting to the root of health problems and then helping to monitor the effectiveness of treatment.

Recommended sites:

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/08/04/intelligent.clothing/index.html?iref=newssearch

http://www.livescience.com/technology/080720-kevlar-coating.html